Editor’s note: This commentary is by David F. Kelley, an attorney and a co-founder of Project Harmony (now PH International) who is the chair of the Hazen Union School Board.
[A]ct 46, the 2015 education governance law, says its goals are to improve our schools by creating greater 1) efficiency, 2) quality, 3) equity, 4) transparency and 5) accountability. Nobody has any argument with those goals. But Act 46 says the way to achieve these goals is by eliminating local school boards — thereby dismissing the efforts and dedication of hundreds and hundreds of community volunteers — and installing centralized, regional governance structures to control and operate our schools.
The Legislature declared in Act 46 that it was not the intent of the law to close local schools. But it won’t be the Legislature to make that decision; it will be the new centralized regional school boards. And there’s the problem. Vermont communities should make their own decisions about whether and when to close a school. It may not happen in the next few years, but once the regional boards are firmly established, the pressure will build to close schools. The smaller, more rural communities, with fewer representatives on the regional board, will begin to see their local schools closed and more children bused, not because it enhances educational quality but because their bigger neighbor needs to increase their enrollment.
If we want more efficiency and more quality, we should reward actual demonstrated improvements in efficiency and quality, rather than compliance with simply eliminating local school boards. Maine attempted an Act 46 type consolidation of more centralized school districts 10 years ago. There were no savings for taxpayers. The primary result was bigger administrative offices, and there are now dozens of districts that have been trying to get divorced.
Equity is a critical goal, but that is a complex, difficult conversation that Vermont has just barely begun. Bigger is not always better. In fact, there is solid evidence that students from poverty stricken backgrounds are better served at small schools. For some students, South Burlington is a great high school. And for some students, Craftsbury Academy and Cabot are even better. One size does not serve all students, but Act 46 assumes that bigger is necessarily better. (Here is some of the better research:
www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG05-05Hylden.pdf (at page 36). See also http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED464777.)
Act 46’s cookie-cutter approach runs counter to the other important — and useful — changes being made in Vermont’s schools. Flexible pathways, dual enrollment, personalized learning plans all recognize that schools cannot be all things to all students all the time. As our economy becomes more global and our technologies become more complex our schools need to be more customized and more personalized — not more centralized. Our students need more choices and more opportunities and our communities need to be more engaged — not less engaged. Just when all of these other changes demand closer ties between community members and schools, the Act 46 governance model will disconnect schools from their communities and make school boards less accessible, not more accessible.
If we want efficiency, quality and equity, then disposing of local school boards and squeezing out tuitioning towns and small schools isn’t the answer.
If we want efficiency, quality and equity, then disposing of local school boards and squeezing out tuitioning towns and small schools isn’t the answer. Getting rid of local school boards and creating more removed and more disconnected governance is the last thing we need if we are interested in accountability and transparency. Here are some ideas about how we can make Act 46 better:
• Support flexible implementation and de-emphasize the push for the so-called “preferred structure” so that communities may legitimately innovate and examine a variety of paths to those worthy goals.
• Provide communities with adequate resources to conduct an authentic analysis of the effectiveness of their current structure, and to explore a wide variety of options to meet Act 46 goals. Today there is no way a small committee of volunteers with few resources can produce the data the Agency of Education says will be required to permit an “alternative structure.”
• Instead of encouraging a “one size fits all” structure, we should actually encourage and provide rewards to school districts that create new, imaginative and innovative solutions and models to meet the goals of Act 46.
• The Legislature should honor its promise not to force any district to give up historic school choice. When a tuition district is unable to design a merger plan that will enable it to maintain historic school choice, it should be exempt from the consolidation requirements.
• Side-by-side mergers should be allowed with one district composing a side.
• Create and implement a results based accountability system and specific evaluation plan to measure the performance of Act 46 at the local and state levels. Act 46 itself does nothing new to enhance accountability or transparency.
Finally, voters should remember that the tax incentives offered to those who consolidate under Act 46 are not actual tax savings. Those incentives simply come out of the state education fund. What goes into one school district’s pocket comes out of their neighbor’s pocket and oftentimes that neighbor cannot satisfy the requirements for those incentives. Not exactly the Vermont way. To be equitable, we should reward results, not structures.
As it stands today, Act 46 is not good enough. We can do better. For more information on how to improve the law, please read “7 Problems with Act 46” at www.vtschoolsrock.org/.
